Shaft

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A pregnant woman was in serious condition Sunday night after falling three stories down an elevator shaft at the Sunset Hills condominium complex, officials said. The woman, Jacklin Ross, 28, is five months pregnant, they said. The fall occurred about 6 p.m., said Assistant Fire Chief James Quinn, of the Lauderdale Lakes Fire-Rescue Department. Neighbors complained of chronic structural and mechanical problems at the complex at 3600 NW 21st St. Several balconies had broken rails, and graffiti covered some walls.

If you saw Jeffrey Wright's hilarious and volcanic performance as the Salvadoran drug lord Peoples Hernandez in last summer's Shaft, his portrayal of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in the HBO film Boycott may confound you. It's a platitude to call an actor who switches gears from role to role a chameleon, but Wright doesn't just scramble identities in moving from Peoples to King -- he turns himself into an entirely different style of performer....

The voice does not disappoint. It begins somewhere near his thighs and stops with rolling finality just north of his sunglasses. But while Isaac Hayes may be talking food, I'm hearing, "He's a complicated man but no one understands him but his woman -- Shaft." I'm half of Hayes' demographic, the half that remembers him as the voice of the first breakthrough movie with a black hero. My 8-year-old son and his friends are the other half of his audience, the TV viewers who know him as the voice of "Chef" on South Park, the mentor of suburban white children.

Arthur Dionisio has always been a tinkerer, fixing everything from cars to lawn mowers to washing machines. Three years ago he was having coffee with his wife, Wendy, when the conversation turned to inventions. Dionisio noted that he was tired of replacing the corroded rollers on his boat trailer every couple of years, so his wife told him to go out in the garage and make one that wouldn't corrode. Dionisio did as she suggested and the result is Rollapal, an invention that increases the life of your boat trailer's rollers and makes launching and loading a boat much easier.

Beginning in January of 1999, some health maintenance organizations put the shaft to those of us who live in Palm Beach County. They dropped -- or reduced to the point where they might as well have dropped -- prescription drug coverage. The Sun-Sentinel reported the facts, but was editorially mute. Palm Beach County is no richer, no healthier than other counties. However, we continue to get the short end of the stick if we are to believe the new HMO agendas as released in the Sun-Sentinel last month.

Two flying truck parts caused a small fuel spill and more than $7,000 damage to eight cars on Interstates 95 and 595 on Friday afternoon, according to the Florida Highway Patrol. No one was injured in either accident. About 1 p.m. a drive shaft came off a truck on I-95 just south of the Atlantic Boulevard exit. The shaft punctured a fuel tanker, causing 50 gallons of fuel to spill on the shoulder of the northbound lanes, an FHP statement said. The drive shaft caused more than $6,000 damage to four other cars.

By RORY L. ARONSKY and JOHN THOMASON Hollywood Hills High Western High, September 22, 2000

The summer's over, we're back to school and the boredom has begun. Here's our list of the best and worst movies of the summer. Some movies even made both lists: The Best Mission Impossible 2: Tom Cruise. John Woo. More action. Enough said. Titan A.E.: The plot was not perfect and the characters were not well developed, but the animation was so cool. Me, Myself and Irene: Jim Carrey gave a great performance in this film as two conflicting personalities. It's amazing RenM-ie Zellweger was able to put up with it for so long.

One man was hurt, seven vehicles were damaged, and rush-hour traffic was tied up following three road-debris incidents Friday morning. Interstate 95 was backed up in both directions for more than an hour after a pickup, swerving to avoid a wheelbarrow left on the roadway, overturned and dumped sand across two southbound lanes. Both lanes were closed as a crew cleaned up near Griffin Road after the 7:45 a.m. accident. "Anyone could've been killed in that," said Lt. John Bagnardi, spokesman for the Florida Highway Patrol.

It must be harmonic convergence. In the past few months, two of the best-loved themes in movie history have been given new life. The first goes something like this: "Bum bum bum-bum bum bum-bum bum bum bum-bum tweedle-dee tweedle-dee duh-dum." The other used to go, "Who's the black private dick that's a sex machine with all the chicks?" That was back in 1971. The refurbished version has been sanitized somewhat for the less flamboyant audiences of 2000. We're talking Mission: Impossible 2 and Shaft.

The man who would risk his neck for his brother man is back. That's right, Shaft is back and Samuel L. Jackson plays him wonderfully. Of course, Jackson is not a new Shaft nor a resurrection. He plays the nephew of the original John Shaft (Richard Roundtree, who makes a few brief appearances in this film). Jackson's John Shaft is angrier and more violent than Roundtree's. Shaft is faced with a case that is fueled by a racial murder in New York. The case gets even hotter when Walter Wade (Christian Bale)